Photonic microwave frequency up conversion using unbalanced temporal pulse shaping in a cascaded modulation scheme

A novel approach to generate high frequency millimeter-wave (mm-wave) pulses based on photonics-assisted microwave frequency up-conversion is demonstrated. An unbalanced temporal pulse shaping system involving two cascaded Mach-Zehnder modulators both biased at the minimum transmission points is developed for the first time to achieve 40 times microwave frequency up conversion. The proposed approach is verified by simulations. An mm-wave pulse with a carrier frequency of 80 GHz is generated from a 2-GHz microwave drive signal.